Jac VerSteeg
Florida public schools have arts magnets, science magnets, language arts magnets, foreign language magnets, and on and on. Why not have sports magnets as well?
The Florida Legislature is considering bills to greatly expand “choice” for student-athletes and, incidentally, students who participate in other extracurricular activities.
Examples are SB 684 and HB 7039. Changes to eligibility the Legislature is contemplating include allowing transfer students to play sports immediately — now, they have to sit out a year. Another change would allow parents to place their child in any school that has space, if the parents provide transportation. Another would let home-schooled kids choose to take part in extracurricular activities at any public schools in their district — now, home-schooled students are restricted to the school they otherwise would be assigned to attend.
Some coaches, educators and parents oppose such ideas on the grounds that they will encourage recruiting and create sport-centric powerhouses that are unfair to other schools.
Some legislative proposals seek to combat recruiting by levying fines and other harsh punishments against school officials caught doing it. But nothing would stop a parent who thinks his son or daughter could get a college scholarship from “recruiting” his or her kid to attend a powerhouse school.
I will concede that the Legislature could be on the way toward creating “choice” sports dynasties. But some of the horror among educators that such a football magnet or baseball magnet would be an affront to academic purity is elitist and hypocritical.
To make my case, I draw your attention to one of the best high schools not just in Florida but in the entire United States. It is the Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach. Dreyfoos is a fantastic school. It has its own foundation. Entrance is by audition, and competition is fierce.
The school, always a top-rated school in the county and state, accepts students who show talent in theater, dance, music, visual arts, or communication arts.
Parents angling to get their child into the school can spend quite a bit of money on lessons. The school has denied that creates a bias against poor families. The school also has denied its auditions — which by their nature are subjective — have been bent to admit many children of prominent county residents, including county commissioners, school board members and editors.
Dreyfoos does not have to “recruit.” The best of the best students jockey for entrance, and the teachers pick their students. As a result, Dreyfoos teachers have things much easier than, say, teachers in the Glades, where poverty and isolation have made teaching a special challenge.
Now, every parent of a dance student lucky and skilled enough to be admitted to Dreyfoos is going to claim their child deserves a place in an academically blessed high school and that an excellent dance program enhances the academic atmosphere of that school.
I need somebody to explain to me why it is desirable to have a magnet program that welcomes elite high school dancers but it would be an affront to do the same for elite athletes? What are dancers, after all, but elite athletes?
I understand why a coach lucky enough to have a skilled shortstop would not want the kid to bolt for a school with a better team. But it is hypocritical for academic types to sneer at that kind of transfer. After all, academically gifted kids already are transferring out to magnets and charter schools in droves. They go to schools that get A’s from the state and leave behind schools that get C’s and D’s.
Just as the shortstop’s designated school wishes to keep the benefits of his talent, the teachers and students at the designated school wish they could have used the transferred-out academically gifted kid’s test scores when school grades come around. But the magnet gets the benefit of those.
A kid who can play trumpet or drums in the marching band has a chance to attend an elite magnet school based on special talent. So does the kid who designs the posters announcing the football game. But the kid who plays quarterback? Not so lucky. But how are the skills of a musician or visual artist significantly more related to core academic subjects than the ability to throw a football with pinpoint accuracy?
So long as kids in sports programs meet academic requirements to stay on the team, what’s wrong with letting them choose the programs that cater to their elite set of skills? Allowing athletes to have school choice doesn’t go far enough. Let them have sports magnets.
• • •
Jac Wilder VerSteeg is a columnist for The South Florida Sun Sentinel, former deputy editorial page editor for The Palm Beach Post and former editor of Context Florida.
